Fish!

[bbird]

This is kind of silly, because I have had fish off and on my whole life. But I went yesterday and bought a big aquarium, and all the stuff that goes with it. Plus fish, even though Petco was mad at me. I guess they have a policy that they can't sell you fish if you buy a aquarium too. They want the water to set for 48 hours.
I finally convinced them that they can cross out the "guarantee" on the paper if the fish die, and I take whole responsibilty. The 19 yo who sold them to me said in a snotty way that they will be all dead by morning. Well, guess what? They aren't!

Anywho...got sidetracked. We have 10 neon tetra's, 5 black and silver tetras, 2 swordtails, and 4 hmmm..don't know what they are called but they are little orange and black fish. They were out of bala sharks, but I am going to pick up two to finish off the tank next time I go to town. I wanted to keep small fish because it makes cleaning the darn thing easier. The sharks will be the only big things and they do grow really big (salmon size, lol).

We were all sitting in the dark last night for a couple hours watching them swim around. I forgot how entertaining and relaxing that is.

[Kathy]

;D I'm glad you found the kinds of fish & aquarium you wanted.

My fish experiences have been with small fish bowls & gold fish or guppies.

Although I think fish are cool & some are incredibly beautiful; I have a form of vertigo and looking into an aquarium makes me so dizzy I walk away on shakey legs like I was drunk.

I went to a mall once that had one of those gorgeous full wall aquariums-I ended up having to leave the mall because not only did I get dizzy but nauseated.

So when you get a chance-try taking some pics of your fish-I think I can handle seeing an aquarium as long as the waters not moving.

[bbird]

Oh man, I know what you are talking about. Dh I think has that, although house size aquariums don't do it. We went through the big aquarium at the beach years ago and you walk into a room that is wall to ceiling of glass so the fish are even swimming above you. Dh got really sick and could hardly walk. We couldn't figure it out since he doesn't get sick on boats or by motion but then we heard about someone else not being able to look at aquariums and figured it out.

Oh, I'll have to take pictures later! Fun fun! lol

[Deleted]

I miss my tanks! I used to have a whole roomful of them, I was an addict, yes I was. I started out with freshwater, then ended up with all saltwater tanks. I liked them better because you don't have to clean them like you do the freshwater tanks.

I don't know why those people at Petco wouldn't want you to take freshwater fish home with the aquarium. All you have to do is put some of those chlorine remover drops in the water, and it's good to go. And the chlorine is all out of the water in 24 hours, anyway, not 48. They seem to be a little twisted in their information...

Have fun gazing at the fish. My first tank was a little 5 gallon one full of guppies, and it was in my room. I think I was 10 or 11 years old. I'd lay there for hours watching the gorgeous tails on those male guppies instead of going to sleep like I was supposed to. ;D

Oh, funny, I just remembered - my dad, who was a carpenter, built us a house up on Mt. Scott when I was about 6. He put a built-in fish tank IN the wall at the end of the tub (the vanity was on the other side of the wall so there was access from both sides. Well, there was a little flip-up door on the bathtub side and it had holes in it for air circulation. He put a bunch of swordtails and black mollies in there. The only problem was, the fish sometimes jumped through the holes and landed in the bathtub. We'd find one all dried up in there every once in a while, but the funny part is one jumped in the tub while my mom was in there taking a bath! You should have heard the screaming! Unfortunately, the fish didn't survive the procedure. Eventually, my dad got smart and tacked some nylon screening material to the inside of that little flip-up door, so the fish stayed in the tank and my mom could take a bath in peace. Wouldn't that be cool, though, to have one right at the end of the bathtub so you could lean back with just the tank light on and relax and contemplate your fish? (Better than contemplating your navel, I guess!)

~Lannie

[bbird]

Now a aquarium at the foot of a bathtub...I could go for that! lol

Are saltwater tanks hard to learn to keep up? I would love, I mean absolutely love to have saltwater fish, but I have always heard that it is hard to keep the tank maintained with the right chemicals, and harder to keep the fish alive. Then there is the little problem of money. I would want the big big spendy fish like you see in drs. offices, lol.

I took some pictures, but they are not very good. Here they are though so you can get a glimpse of what we have. Wish the fish showed up better.





Once again, ignore the spackled sheetrock behind it all!! Someday I will finally decide on what color to paint that room, lol. I hung a piece of fishing net up on the wall behind and was in the process of hanging all those shells on the net to see if I like the look or not, lol. I'm not into the "beach" or nautical decorations, but that wall was bare to start with so just checking looks out, lol. The stand is really a dinette hutch...you know those hutches on legs that have the two drawers and the cabinets on the side. (I don't know what it is called really, lol)

[Deleted]

I had fish my whole life... fresh water and salt water. Salt water does take a bit more testing etc, but I started with seahorses and went to the more colorful fish as my experience grew. It's funny that this thread got started now as I've recently been debating getting another tank... maybe it's the stress latley, but I have been missing the peacefullness of watching my tanks..

Kaza

[bbird]

Seahorses! I had no idea you can keep seahorses! Oh man, oh man.....that would be too cool. Dh is always giving me a bad time about going overboard when I get an interest in things, lol. This will send him over the edge. DD was just telling me that seahorse males carry the babies....totally fascinating!

There is something so relaxing about the fish, sometimes you are not even aware that you are relaxing...so I say go for it Kaza! lol

Does anyone know anything about Betta fish? Why are they so special? They look like dead fish to me, and they are always in little cups or in planters.

Oh...a little tangent here. I have always wanted hermit crabs. I was jinxed as a child because everytime we went to the beach to this shop that had them for sale they would be out when we went so I never got any. Well, now you see them all over in the pet stores and they paint the shells with paint and make them fancy. I almost picked up a couple the other day but then I saw where you have to have them in 70-80 degree rooms and our house is way too cold and I would have had to buy them a heater and tank. I just wanted them in a open flat bowl. Darn!

[Deleted]

mljjranch said:

Seahorses! I had no idea you can keep seahorses! Oh man, oh man.....that would be too cool. Dh is always giving me a bad time about going overboard when I get an interest in things, lol. This will send him over the edge. DD was just telling me that seahorse males carry the babies....totally fascinating!

Yes, I started with Dwarf Seahorses to get my feet wet in salt water fish, then eventually got into some of the bigger and more colorful (and more expensive) ones. They are a lot of fun, but you will need shrimp eggs (easily bought) to feed them. They eat them as they hatch.

There is something so relaxing about the fish, sometimes you are not even aware that you are relaxing...so I say go for it Kaza! lol

Yes they sure are... just have to get things settled down a bit so I can spend the money on them.

Does anyone know anything about Betta fish? Why are they so special? They look like dead fish to me, and they are always in little cups or in planters.

For a few years I raised bettas. They only look like that when they are in those lil cups at the store. I made good money selling mine on Aquabid. (Aquabid.com)

Oh...a little tangent here. I have always wanted hermit crabs. I was jinxed as a child because everytime we went to the beach to this shop that had them for sale they would be out when we went so I never got any. Well, now you see them all over in the pet stores and they paint the shells with paint and make them fancy. I almost picked up a couple the other day but then I saw where you have to have them in 70-80 degree rooms and our house is way too cold and I would have had to buy them a heater and tank. I just wanted them in a open flat bowl. Darn!

a small tank with a light hanging in it will keep them pleanty warm. but watch out... your pet or not, they DO clamp down on you with those claws!!

[Deleted]

Wow, I can finally post! This thing's been acting up all day. Molasses in the gears or something...

Saltwater tanks are expensive to set up, but a breeze to maintain. You check the salinity occasionally, and the pH, but that's about it. You have to take it over a nitrite cycle when you first set it up (long story about this and quite involved, so if you're interested I can explain, otherwise...)

Anyway, I would change out about 1/4 of the water every couple months, whenever it looked like it was getting low due to evaporation and the pH started to get too low. A gallon of fresh water stirred in once in a while took care of the evaporation problem for the most part. You never want to disturb the gravel or the biological filter underneath (the nitrite cycle thing here) once it's set up. For that reason, you should NEVER get blue damsels - the little SOBs dig holes under things and upset the whole apple cart and you have to be an explorer to find their "nests."

You also only want to put saltwater-aquarium-safe gravel in, never the colored stuff. Only real corals and barnacles, etc., never the little painted decorations. The salt comes in a bag, and I can't remember the name of it now, but you mix it up like 1 cup per gallon or two of water. It's really easy.

Unfortunately, I had my saltwater tanks before they came out with the powdered filter-feeder foods, like for sponges, corals, scallops, etc., and I starved a bunch of those to death. Now you buy a bottle of this stuff you just squirt in the water, and those animals feed off the little microscopic whatevers that are in there. I never kept seahorses because I was told they had to filter-feed, too, and I didn't want to starve them. I learned my lesson on the live corals, sponges and scallops.

The fish are on the spendy side, too, which is a bummer, because they're not guaranteed to live any longer than cheap freshwater fish, but OMG they're beautiful. I had a hermit crab once, not a land-dwelling one, but a water one. He dined on all my most expensive fish during the night when they were sleeping. I couldn't figure out what was happening to them, until one morning I caught him trying to eat my Blue Surgeon! LOL! Surgeons have an exoskeleton, and the crab had hold of him and was dragging him all around the bottom of the tank, but he couldn't take a chunk out of him. That was the only fish that survived that blasted crab. I took the crab back to the store where I bought him and traded him for a pair of clownfish.

I had a baby moray eel once, too (a "snowflake" eel they call them because of their color pattern, brown on white). That one I named Houdini because he/she/it kept escaping the tank. They can breathe air for a while, and several times I found that stupid eel on the other side of the room, behind a plant or something. I'd pick it up, rinse it off and toss it back in the tank, at which point it would regurgitate everything it had eaten that day, and then go on as if nothing had happened. One day it got out early in the day, though, and by the time I got home from work, it was definitely dead, so that was the end of eels for me.

Yellow tangs are a lot of fun and very colorful, but they like to eat the legs off shrimp. I had a legless shrimp for a while living in a floating plastic colander (it was for his own protection!) until he shed his skin and got new legs. I finally got rid of the tang when he started picking on more than just the shrimp.

Now that I've remembered all the troubles I had with my saltwater fish, I don't know why I was recommending it to you! HA! Yeah, they're trouble, and they're expensive, but if you get some that are not aggressive and get along together, it's truly beautiful. I had a friend back then who had what she called a "critter tank" that had no aggressive or large fish in it. She had tiny little raspberry crabs (look like a regular full size crab, but 1/2 inch across and bright red), she had several beautiful live corals, some feather dusters, a bunch of anemones (and two clowns to feed them), and some tiny little neon wrasses that were bright fuscia from their nose halfway down their body, and bright lemon yellow from there to the ends of their tails. There were some other little critters in there, too, but I can't remember everything. She had a complete little ecosystem in there, but it was a large (100 gallon I think) tank, so there was room for the whole community. It was so peaceful to sit and stare at, though. Kind of like looking at a little tidepool, only better lit and more variety!

~Lannie

[bbird]

Omg, the drama of fish...I love it! That is one thing about you Lannie that I enjoy, you really get into your pets, lol.

All the stuff that you mentioned about salt water tanks, I had no idea on. Fascinating stuff. Gosh, if I won the lottery I could have so much of this stuff to feed my interest plus have someone else clean and maintain the tanks, lol. Yeah, I'm dreaming!

I'll pass on the reptiles and rats, spiders though. Just not my cup a tea. ;-)

[Deleted]

Bbird... look what you've done! Now not only have I been running lists of seeds and chickens through my head, but now I've been constantly thinking of what fish I want...

[starfire]

You make me want ot put my tank up but I have no room for the fish tank. I love watching the fish it is so peacefull.

[bbird]

kazahleenah said:

Bbird... look what you've done! Now not only have I been running lists of seeds and chickens through my head, but now I've been constantly thinking of what fish I want...

heehee....You're welcome! ;D I've been trying unsuccessfully to come up with a spreadsheet on where our money goes that has more details then the one I've been using. I'm almost scared though to see how much money really does go to the animals here. Oh well, I'm sure if we didn't have animals we would be stressed and uptight people! lol